Move melee damage bonus from fighting to weapon skill

[Quazifuji]

My goal for this proposal is to solve two different issues:

1. There's been a general effort to avoid clear skill thresholds, and one of the few that still exists (besides shields) is min-delay on weapons. While I don't have a solution to eliminate that threshold entirely, increasing the damage bonus gained from weapon skills would increase the value of continuing to train a weapon skill past min-delay.
   
2. Fighting skill's HP bonus is already very powerful, enough so that even characters that use spells as their primary means of offense will heavily train fighting for its defensive bonuses. The fact that it also gives damage mostly just seems to take it further into "no-brainer" territory. This is especially true when your weapon is at min-delay, at which point fighting skill gives almost the same offensive bonuses as weapon skill, but also gives significant defensive bonuses.

If fighting were turned into a purely defensive skill (and probably renamed in the process), and the offensive benefits of weapon skills were increased after min-delay, then I think it could make the decision of whether to train fighting or weapon skill after reaching min-delay a bit more interesting. If the damage bonus from weapon skill were increased after reaching min-delay you could further reduce the threshold element, although that would also add complexity.

I'm not convinced this is a good idea, but I think it's at least worth discussing.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Or just remove damage bonus from fighting, it will make fights more predictable.

[Nekoatl]

According to the wiki, weapon skills already contribute more to both accuracy and damage than the Fighting skill, meaning that there's always value it training it past a weapon's mindelay. In a way, the Fighting skill is also kind of gimped, in that it only benefits melee attacks. Ranged attackers and spellcasters have an incentive to train it for the HP bonus, but don't benefit nearly as much as melee attackers. I guess the logic is that meleedudes need the HP more, but it feels like ranged characters kind of get shafted, as spellcasters have Spellcasting and meleedudes have Fighting, but there's no general ranged combat skill. Anyway, if players are training weapon skills to mindelay and then leaving them untouched forevermore, on the assumption that there's no point in training them further, then that's just player error.

That said, I do personally dislike skill thresholds like mindelay, but I think weapon skills are by far not the biggest offenders. Magic spells have hard caps on spellpower, and even on spell success (although the massive investment required to get from 1% to 0% is rarely worth it). Players that continue to train weapon skills past the mindelay threshold still receive significant performance benefits, while players that train spell schools past the spellpower cap get little to no benefit.

As for "no brainer" skills, in theory every defensive skill except shields falls into this category, as it's always better to have them than to not. But, calling them "no brainers" is a bit misleading, because the question of how much to invest in them how early in the game can make or break a character.

[Siegurt]

According to the wiki, weapon skills already contribute more to both accuracy and damage than the Fighting skill, meaning that there's always value it training it past a weapon's mindelay. In a way, the Fighting skill is also kind of gimped, in that it only benefits melee attacks. Ranged attackers and spellcasters have an incentive to train it for the HP bonus, but don't benefit nearly as much as melee attackers. I guess the logic is that meleedudes need the HP more, but it feels like ranged characters kind of get shafted, as spellcasters have Spellcasting and meleedudes have Fighting, but there's no general ranged combat skill. Anyway, if players are training weapon skills to mindelay and then leaving them untouched forevermore, on the assumption that there's no point in training them further, then that's just player error.

That said, I do personally dislike skill thresholds like mindelay, but I think weapon skills are by far not the biggest offenders. Magic spells have hard caps on spellpower, and even on spell success (although the massive investment required to get from 1% to 0% is rarely worth it). Players that continue to train weapon skills past the mindelay threshold still receive significant performance benefits, while players that train spell schools past the spellpower cap get little to no benefit.

As for "no brainer" skills, in theory every defensive skill except shields falls into this category, as it's always better to have them than to not. But, calling them "no brainers" is a bit misleading, because the question of how much to invest in them how early in the game can make or break a character.

This is incorrect on some points:

1. Fighting helps ranged weapons as much as it does melee ones.
2. There is no effective hard skill cap on spell skills. To get to the real spell power cap requires you have more skill than it is possible to get, unless you have more than 75 int, which you don't have.
3. The amount that post-min-delay training of a weapon skill increases damage is comparatively very small, fighting is very slightly smaller than that, and gives you more hps, the additional hps are more valuable than the difference in damage by a healthy margin, so training fighting before post-min-delay weapon skills is pretty much always a good idea. Virtually all the other skills that you would train to make you stay alive better are also are more valuable than post-min-delay weapon skills, so while training them isn't worthless, there is nearly always something more important to train first, that isn't player error.

[Nekoatl]

1. Fighting helps ranged weapons as much as it does melee ones.

If this is true, the wiki's page on Fighting is lying. "Fighting is a generic combat skill that provides small bonuses to your accuracy and damage with melee attacks (but not spells or ranged attacks)"

2. There is no effective hard skill cap on spell skills. To get to the real spell power cap requires you have more skill than it is possible to get, unless you have more than 75 int, which you don't have.

This is the case for the highest level spells when spell enhancers aren't available (a well-equipped level 27 demigod wizard can hit max spell power on Fire Storm at skill levels far below 27), but I've hit the cap on many lower level spells.

But, I guess there's always the option of wearing heavier armor to reduce spell success, so in that sense I suppose you're right....

3. The amount that post-min-delay training of a weapon skill increases damage is comparatively very small, fighting is very slightly smaller than that, and gives you more hps, the additional hps are more valuable than the difference in damage by a healthy margin, so training fighting before post-min-delay weapon skills is pretty much always a good idea. Virtually all the other skills that you would train to make you stay alive better are also are more valuable than post-min-delay weapon skills, so while training them isn't worthless, there is nearly always something more important to train first, that isn't player error.

Of course the skill levels up to mindelay will be more valuable than those that come afterwards, and the damage bonus for weapon skills isn't that much bigger than that of fighting. But, because the XP required to skill up scales at ever increasing rates, the bang per buck that a neglected weapon skill offers relative to skills that have been trained to higher levels only increases as a character progresses further into the game. And, that's not even taking into consideration situational factors like drain and stabbing.

That said, there is definitely room for improvement in how weapon skills are implemented. I think setting a minimum and maximum delay for each base weapon, and then having a linear progression in attack delay as skill increases from 0 to 27 would be a good idea, and the accuracy/damage bonus per skill level could be reevaluated in conjunction with the change.

[Midn8]

If this is true, the wiki's page on Fighting is lying. "Fighting is a generic combat skill that provides small bonuses to your accuracy and damage with melee attacks (but not spells or ranged attacks)"

The wiki isn't reliable

This is the case for the highest level spells when spell enhancers aren't available (a well-equipped level 27 demigod wizard can hit max spell power on Fire Storm at skill levels far below 27), but I've hit the cap on many lower level spells.
But, I guess there's always the option of wearing heavier armor to reduce spell success, so in that sense I suppose you're right....

This is literally not possible (the hard cap for int is 72, and even with max skills you won't hit full.

[Quazifuji]

This is the case for the highest level spells when spell enhancers aren't available (a well-equipped level 27 demigod wizard can hit max spell power on Fire Storm at skill levels far below 27), but I've hit the cap on many lower level spells.

But, I guess there's always the option of wearing heavier armor to reduce spell success, so in that sense I suppose you're right....

On top of the option of wearing heavier armor, if you're at maximum spell-power on a low level spell there's a good chance you could be casting higher level spells. There are some spells where spell power doesn't matter a lot, but even then it's generally not worth getting those spells to 0% failure rate. You also just have the fact that spells are affected by int and wizardry and armor, so even if you argue that there is a clearly optimal failure rate and spellpower to reach, there isn't a fixed skill value to aim for. Overall, I think spell skills are perfectly fine, and certainly nowhere near as problematic as weapon skills and shield skills where there's a very clear "if you're using this item, you should train your skill to exactly this value."

[Lasty]

Linear delay scaling has been tried and no one was happy with the results. It's remarkably difficult to come up with damage formula changes that are clear improvements over status quo.

[duvessa]

As long as skills have diminishing returns, every character is going to end up with levels in fighting and every character with dex is going to end up with levels in dodging, because every character benefits from these skills and they eventually become really cheap compared to your character's more specific skills.
Not convinced an HP skill is worth having. Four skills whose sole purpose is to let your character take more attacks (the proposed new Fighting, Armour, Dodging, Shields) is a lot.

[Nekoatl]

Linear delay scaling has been tried and no one was happy with the results. It's remarkably difficult to come up with damage formula changes that are clear improvements over status quo.

This makes sense, considering the entire game is balanced around the current formulas. If all the monsters were to be rebalanced against new formulas, then other means of dealing with monsters might then need to be balanced against the rebalanced monsters. That seems like a lot of work.

A less disruptive option might be to provide some kind of alternative benefit for training a skill past mindelay. For example, maybe there could be an X% (where X is the number of skill levels trained beyond the weapon's mindelay cap) chance of dealing bonus damage (stab damage maybe; would also make short blades less useless in fights with heavily armored enemies).

Not convinced an HP skill is worth having. Four skills whose sole purpose is to let your character take more attacks (the proposed new Fighting, Armour, Dodging, Shields) is a lot.

The defensive skills each provide survivability in a different way, though, so they don't feel redundant to me. Also, saying the sole purpose of Fighting is to let your character take more attacks is wrong. It also improves your ability to hit and deal damage (by a small amount, but considering how many attacks the typical character performs over the course of the game, that adds up to a significant benefit). Occasionally I've even trained Fighting up in place of weapon skills in the early game when I didn't want to initially commit to a weapon category, and then later trained up the category of my chosen weapon to hit mindelay (though I don't recommend this for most characters).

I also think it's a good idea to have a skill that boosts HP and a skill that boosts MP. With different strategies, MP aptitudes, mutations, and items from game to game, the correct amount of HP or MP for a character to have at any point is extremely difficult to define, and having these skills allows players to compensate with strategic skilling. Tying combat/magic benefits to them makes those decisions more interesting.

This is literally not possible (the hard cap for int is 72, and even with max skills you won't hit full.

A level 27 demigod wizard who chooses to increase Int every 3 levels will have a natural Int of 40. Without relying on artifacts, mutations, or divine support, this character could wear a robe of the Archmagi, a ring of fire, a ring and helm of intelligence, and wield a staff of fire or conjurations for 3 spell power enhancers (the maximum) and up to 9 bonus Int. Assuming Spellcasting is maxed for its unique benefits, the cap of 200 spell power on Fire Storm is hit between 16 and 17 Conjurations & Fire Magic. If you don't believe me, fire up Wizard mode and see it with your own eyes.

Not only is 72 Int not required, but it's also no longer the hard cap for stats... 125 is. LearnDB doesn't seem to mention the change, but the wiki does. I can't imagine a player would ever hit this cap outside of Wizard mode, but it would bring the required Conjurations and Fire Magic skill down to 3.

[duvessa]

Also, saying the sole purpose of Fighting is to let your character take more attacks is wrong.

Yes, that's why I didn't say that.

[Nekoatl]

My bad.

[Nekoatl]

If this is true, the wiki's page on Fighting is lying. "Fighting is a generic combat skill that provides small bonuses to your accuracy and damage with melee attacks (but not spells or ranged attacks)"

The wiki isn't reliable

From the in-game description: "Fighting skill increases your accuracy and damage in hand-to-hand combat, and also increases your maximum health." That's 2 accounts (in-game and wiki) of Fighting only applying to melee attacks, and only 1 (LearnDB) of it also applying to ranged attacks, and LearnDB is also not reliable.

[Siegurt]

If this is true, the wiki's page on Fighting is lying. "Fighting is a generic combat skill that provides small bonuses to your accuracy and damage with melee attacks (but not spells or ranged attacks)"

The wiki isn't reliable

From the in-game description: "Fighting skill increases your accuracy and damage in hand-to-hand combat, and also increases your maximum health." That's 2 accounts (in-game and wiki) of Fighting only applying to melee attacks, and only 1 (LearnDB) of it also applying to ranged attacks, and LearnDB is also not reliable.

Well, since the actual code applies fighting to your ranged attack damage, and it *is* reliable, we can just write of any bad documentation as just that.